I recently found you and your Substack and I'm slowly making my way through your work on here. I love it!
When I was in my twenties, I used to feel restricted by the idea of a timeline. Over the past few years, I’ve realised that I don’t actually want all of the milestones. I’ve slowly learned to unsubscribe from what I don’t want and pursue what I do. Doing this has really helped to ease the pressure of what others expect from me and of what I expect from myself.
Five years ago, I would have said that I’m facing the ‘setting up home’ milestones. What I’m actually doing right now is building a business and getting my health in shape. I might think about setting up home one day, but it’s not on the agenda right now. It feels quite freeing!
As I was reading this I was thinking about the ‘traditional’ milestones of adult life and how they have shifted over the past few decades. Getting married, buying a house and having children in your twenties used to be the done thing – it was for my mum and nan anyway. I’ve noticed that we’re collectively realising that we don’t need to follow the done thing if we don’t want to. But what about the people who do genuinely want these things? I have friends who are ready to get married and grow a family, but financial instability doesn’t allow for it (no matter how hard they work). The life that our grandparents and parents once built is, in some cases, totally inaccessible for us today. Shifting timelines isn’t a bad thing at all, but it saddens me that (due to the current economic situation) some people feel the choice has been taken away from them for now.
Issue #22: Timelines, settling down and the fear of falling behind
I recently found you and your Substack and I'm slowly making my way through your work on here. I love it!
When I was in my twenties, I used to feel restricted by the idea of a timeline. Over the past few years, I’ve realised that I don’t actually want all of the milestones. I’ve slowly learned to unsubscribe from what I don’t want and pursue what I do. Doing this has really helped to ease the pressure of what others expect from me and of what I expect from myself.
Five years ago, I would have said that I’m facing the ‘setting up home’ milestones. What I’m actually doing right now is building a business and getting my health in shape. I might think about setting up home one day, but it’s not on the agenda right now. It feels quite freeing!
As I was reading this I was thinking about the ‘traditional’ milestones of adult life and how they have shifted over the past few decades. Getting married, buying a house and having children in your twenties used to be the done thing – it was for my mum and nan anyway. I’ve noticed that we’re collectively realising that we don’t need to follow the done thing if we don’t want to. But what about the people who do genuinely want these things? I have friends who are ready to get married and grow a family, but financial instability doesn’t allow for it (no matter how hard they work). The life that our grandparents and parents once built is, in some cases, totally inaccessible for us today. Shifting timelines isn’t a bad thing at all, but it saddens me that (due to the current economic situation) some people feel the choice has been taken away from them for now.